A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Matthew. As our lord entered Capernaum, a centurion came up to him with this request. Sir, my serving boy is at home in bed paralyzed, suffering painfully. Jesus said to the man, I will come and cure him. Sir, the military man replied, I am not worthy to have you under my roof.
Just give an order, and my boy will get better. I am a man under authority myself, and I have troops assigned to me. If I give a man the order dismissed, off he goes. If I say to another, come here, the man comes. If I tell my slave, do this, he does it.
Jesus showed amazement on hearing this and remarked to his followers. I assure you, I have never found this much faith in Israel. Mark what I say. Many will come from the East and the West and will find a place at the banquet in the kingdom of god with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. And this is the gospel of the lord.
Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit. Amen. Last evening, Gordon Peterson was the chief commentator on a program called Crime on Campus. Well, I've been I've I've been involved in that, believe me.
But what I want to point out is a certain phrase that kept coming up chiefly from the people who are involved in various universities, mainly on the program last night, mainly a man from the University of Towson over near Baltimore. And the phrase coming up was all this. And, of course, they're talking the most about the girl students. Well, almost exclusively. They have no sense of their mortality.
Now, if any of you saw the program, you'll know precisely that phrase kept coming up and coming up. In other words, what they were saying it was this, and I know how truly they're saying it, believe me, I know. They these young ladies come to these universities and they feel secure. They feel life is going to nothing can happen to them. Life is going to go on and on and on.
Leave your door unlocked. I I'm speaking from experience because I asked one of Why don't you lock your door? And the doctor replied, Well, that shows distrust of my fellow students. So one morning, one of the girls woke up and there was a man in her bedroom looking down at her because she didn't lock her door. Well, anyway, that I don't want to get into that.
What I want to get into is that phrase, that these young people have have no sense that they're mortal, that they're going to die, that life can be tough, and that it will end. This came up time and time again. Now, if there's the church for the last it seems, but to me I didn't go back and check it. It seems that for the last four Sundays, at least at least for the last four Sundays, including yesterday, the church has been giving us excerpts from our lord's own words having to do with just this point. Time and time again, we are told, as yesterday, we've had it at least four Sundays, be on guard.
Do your job. You have a work to do, and time is running out, and you don't know when the lord is coming. So be prepared. Watch. Work.
Be alert. Don't go to sleep with a switch. I'm not exaggerating this. Go back and read it yourself. Because we are very, very mortal, and every single one of us dangles by a very thin thread from the hand of God, and we do not know when that thread will be cut.
Sooner or later, tomorrow, next year, the next decade, what's what's a what none of us well, more and more people are living to be 100, but not many live to be 100. And if they do, what what good are they to themselves or anybody else? That's the way the world looks at it, not the way God looks at it. But when you compare that, let us say, to a century, to a decade, to two thousand years of Christianity remember, the Roman Empire lasted nearly that long. It's nothing.
And the bible insists on it, the Old Testament especially, how fleeting life is, how uncertain it is. It's not the fault of God if we don't get the message. It's not the fault of the church if we don't get the message. We are we are wayfarers. We are pilgrims.
I like that word pilgrim. As I tried to point out yesterday, a pilgrim means a man or a woman or a child or or whoever, but and they are on a journey, and it's a hard one. It's a hard if it's not hard by nature, the the pilgrims made it hard. But they know precisely where they're going precisely. When a pilgrim started up around The Netherlands to go down to Spain, to Saint James Shrine in Spain, Compostela, they when as soon as they started way up there in the North, they knew precisely where they were going, to that little town across the mountains, to the shrine of the famous apostle James.
They were not wanderers. They were pilgrims. Now today, we are celebrating the priest of Saint Francis Xavier, one of the companions of Saint Ignatius. He's he's among the first flight of Jesuits right off right off the the block. He winds up over in India, China.
When he started out, he had no idea that. He went from Spain up to Paris and was taking a course in liberal arts, and he winds up over there. The the point what the church is telling us in this advent is to get ready for the coming of the lord Because as sure as much more sure than your birth, you're going to die. I'm everybody's going to die. And we don't know the time where they are, but we better get off our duff and get going and get busy.
Because the things that our lord insist upon that we all have a job that he gives everybody, he gives the slaves, whatever you wanna call them. He gives them a job to do. When he comes back, he demands a reckoning. Where's my money? Where's my gain?
Why didn't you go out and use that money and get me at least interest? It's his heart on them. Read it. It's it's unbelievable. Because in many instances, the guys didn't ask to be they didn't ask for it at all.
It was put upon them. None of us asked to be born. And our consent isn't going to be asked when we die, believe me. Now, what what is terribly important in all is the is what the church is trying to tell us. It's not the what the the actuality of what you do in life is not the important thing at all.
It's not that important. I had a I used to help out father Giselle down at over in Baltimore during the war, and his great motto was quid odd eternity. What does this business that that's so important to me here, what value has it for eternity? Quid, odd, eternity. That's that's what the church is trying to drive home to us.
We talk about Advent and the coming of the Lord. For heaven's sakes, remember he has come. All of this stuff about the Lord coming and preparing for his he has come. But his coming isn't going to be worth a single thing to me unless I bring him into my daily life, into my daily life. Not to some artificial life or the life of tomorrow, the life of but the life of today.
And that's what we how we ought to look at at Advent. How can I bring Jesus Christ into my daily living more effectively? It's not a matter of his coming. It's a matter of my acceptance. It's a matter of my reception.
It's a matter of how I react. It's a matter of how I acknowledge him. It's a matter of what I do about it. What do I do about Jesus coming? Saint Thomas Aquinas, one of his very basic principles that everything we know is known according to the mode of the knower.
Apparently, Wittgenstein never heard that. You'd think he was the first one who discovered it. But that's extremely that everything we know, we know not according to the mode of the of the thing known, but according to me. So when we think of Advent, when we think of the coming of the Lord, think of it not as something that's going to happen. It has happened.
We we have a savior. That's what we ought to drive home to ourselves. We are not alone. We are saved. Jesus Christ has done his part.
It's a reality. It's an actuality. It's history. What isn't history yet is what I do about it. What do I do about it?
And what the church is trying to do during Advent is to get us to wake up, to burst out of our lethargy, to to break out of the tomb of mediocrity, and to put Jesus Christ alive and living and vigorous into our daily living. And that's a lifelong process because you have two strikes against you in this world. And if you don't believe it, just look at the emphasis on Christmas. That tells you everything. You are not of this world.
You belong to Jesus Christ. In the name of the father, and the son, and the holy spirit. Amen.